3/11/2017

The Ottoman Lieutenant is an ill-conceived film from the
very beginning.

Marketing itself as “the first movie to explore the eastern
front of World War I,” really The Ottoman Lieutenant is yet another vaguely
historical romantic drama, where the biggest question isn’t “Whatever will
happen to the tension between the Turks and the Armenians, and how does it
shape World War I, the Middle East, and the future of Islamic/Christian relations?”
but instead “What handsome man will the pretty white American woman choose?”
The “history” of this film is so superficially explored and the film so
unwilling to offer any kind of genuine tension or unlikable characters (aside
from evil Muslim Turks, of course) that it never rises above generic love story
into anything more meaningful, educational, or memorable.

The film, set in the early 20th century,
focuses on American nurse Lillie (Hera Hilmar), whose grief over her dead
brother and her disgust with the country’s segregation and racism leads her to,
on a whim, leave behind her wealthy parents and travel to Turkey after she
hears one of the doctors of a remote hospital discuss their mission to offer healthcare
to all people in the region, whether they are Muslim Turks or Christian Armenians.
The dislike between the two ethnic groups is strong, but an American flag flies
over the hospital, and the doctor, Jude (Josh Hartnett), describes Eastern Anatolia
as a “place of unspeakable violence … but it is also a place of fierce spirit.”

It’s into this totally unknown world that Lillie arrives,
on her first day in Istanbul meeting the handsome Turkish Army Lieutenant
Ismail (Michiel Huisman), who sneaks her into a mosque that she describes as
feeling like she’s “inside God’s thoughts.” That’s about all her experience with
Islam and Muslim ideology although she’s in a country that is predominantly
that faith because at the hospital, she and Jude are both Christians.

The creator of the mission, the doctor Woodruff (Ben Kingsley),
isn’t as welcoming to Lillie as Jude is, though—upon first seeing her, he declares that
the hospital is “no place for a woman.” But while he is, in fact, sexist and grumpy, the reality is also that strife between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the
rebellious Christian Armenians, who want their own country, is growing. As the
buildup to World War I continues, Lillie finds the world around her changing,
with more injured people coming to the hospital, more movement at the garrison
near the hospital, and more interactions between her and Ismail.

The growing friendship between the two of them isn’t unnoticed
by Jude, who clearly has a thing for Lillie and whose Christian faith automatically
aligns him more with the Armenians than with the Turks. He answers “yes” when
Ismail asks if “Just because I wear a uniform and carry a gun, that makes me a
killer?” and he practically grills Ismail on whether Lillie’s “honor” is still
intact after they spend an afternoon together. And so that love triangle
preoccupies most of the film, while the very bloody fighting between the
Armenians and the Turks takes a backseat.

The Ottoman Lieutenant somewhat alludes to the differences
in ideology between Muslims and Christians and relies on archival footage to
depict the destruction of World War I, but that backdrop isn’t the clear focus
here—how Lillie chooses between Ismail and Jude is. But it’s strange, then,
that the film is named after Ismail’s character instead of Lillie, whose
journey—of leaving wealthy Philadelphia behind to pursue a career in medicine
in a place she’s never been, in a language she doesn’t speak, in a faith she
doesn’t understood—is theoretically far more interesting. Instead, it’s Ismail
who gets solo missions; it’s Ismail whose concerns about the Turkish Muslims
and their tactics are highlighted; it’s Ismail who makes major choices that
save people’s lives.

Not only does the film tracing his arc feel like an undermining
of Lillie’s story, but it takes away from subplots worth exploring about what happened
during the Armenian genocide, what occurred to Armenian culture in the region
afterward, and how World War I shaped the Ottoman Empire and what the Middle
East would look like. It’s not like all of those things could have
been answered in this film’s 100-minute runtime, but it’s frustrating how
singularly the film focuses on Ismail at the loss of so many other
opportunities.

There are some things here that work: A relationship
between Lillie and a young patient gives the American woman some legitimate
character development that her romance with Ismail doesn’t; Kingsley adds a
sheen of dignity to a character who is (predictably) tortured by loss; and some
of the landscapes are pretty enough, even though they mostly look like CGI. But
Hartnett feels particularly miscast, and how the movie positions Jude as a controlling
jerk whose obsession with Lillie is OK because of his faith and devotion is
repulsive at times (like when he spits at Lillie, “My God, I can smell him,”
but then goes to pray afterward). Similarly irritating is how unwilling the
film is to truly explore the overlapping and divergent elements of Christianity
and Islam; for a plot that relies so centrally on the relationship between
followers of those religions, the movie doesn’t do much to get into why.

Overall, The Ottoman Lieutenant feels like a first draft
that was roughly edited without being reconciled—from the movie pivoting away
from its would-be protagonist to telling a story that doesn’t dig deep enough
into itself. An enlightening film could be made about this particular place in the world at that particular time, but The Ottoman Lieutenant isn’t it.